Jackie Chan Movie Too Violent for China
Shinjuku Incident-Jackie Chan
Director Derek Yee has deemed Jackie Chan’s new Chinese language film, Shinjuku Incident, “too violent” for China’s cinema-goers. The film features Chan as
a refugee who flees to Japan and ends up in conflict with the local gang culture. Yee felt the picture would pass China’s censorship laws but that the violence, including a graphic scene of a man getting his hand chopped off and then stabbed repeatedly, might still be inappropriate for audiences as China has no age restrictions on film rating. They attempted to cut the more intense scenes for a Chinese release but determined the film seemed “incomplete.” According to Yee, the producers and Jackie himself support this decision. Shinjuku Incident will be released in Chan’s native Hong Kong and Southeast Asia in April, and in Japan in May. This is most interesting to me because I wonder if a director would ever take such a stance when it came to releasing a film in the US? Yee’s position seems aimed directly at the youth of China. If anything I would think studios here would want to count on the youth finding a way to see a film they were restricted from seeing as that sense of reaching something unattainable leads to open wallets and ticket sales.
